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Arizona honors 2 of finest: Sens. Flake and McCain

Arizona’s Republican senators distinguished themselves globally and nationally when they spoke up for the American values we need to reunite a deeply divided nation.

John McCain and Jeff Flake were named the The Arizona Republic’s Arizonans of the Year for 2017 for reminding us all what holds America together — a love of liberty, a quest for justice, a commitment to freedom, a unity of purpose.

Independently and repeatedly, both of them called for a return to the national ideals and founding principles that made America strong in the world and at home.

It took courage for these two Republicans to denounce a Republican president. And courage is exactly what today’s political landscape lacks.

Americans need leaders who dare to buck the divisiveness and bring us together.

They stuck their necks out and paid for it

Clearly McCain and Flake did not stick their necks out for political or personal gain.

They did it because they saw America’s leadership in the world being undermined and America’s core domestic values being eclipsed.

Both paid a price.

McCain called for maintaining America’s role as the world’s beacon of democracy before he announced he was battling a particularly virulent brain cancer.

After he began treatment, McCain continued to deliver needed criticism even though it would have been easier to rest on a lifetime of achievements.

Instead McCain did what he has always done: He showed up to fight for his country – despite the high personal cost.

Flake paid a high political price. In October, Flake announced he would not run for re-election, saying “there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.”

This came after months of fiercely criticizing Trump.

This is about America's core values

Flake’s book, "Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle," lamented his party’s acquiescence to Donald Trump. Coupled with previous criticisms, it assured Flake would face a primary opponent from the far right in 2018.

In announcing his decision not to run, Flake acknowledged a “traditional” limited-government, free-market, free-trade loving, pro-immigration conservative now “has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party, the party that has so long defined itself by its belief in those things.”

Flake made it clear that his principles were more important than his political career, saying he would not be “complicit” in “exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us.”

Both men are fighting hard for America’s core values.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, said to ABC's This Week on Sunday, that he's not planning on running against President Trump in 2020, but he's not ruling it out either.(Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)

But neither McCain nor Flake is engaging in the now-familiar pugilism of smash-mouth politics.

This is not about dividing Americans into warring factions.

It is about reminding us to be United States.

It is about calling for Americans to remember the sterling ideals that have long held this country together in a continuing quest to expand liberty and justice. It is about standards, decency, honor.

Why collaboration, diversity matter

In returning to the Senate in July, after disclosing his brain cancer, McCain called on his colleagues to rise above behavior that he said is “more partisan, more tribal more of the time than any other time I can remember.”

McCain called for senators to work together.

“This country,” he said, “this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, restless, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, good and magnificent country needs us to help it thrive.”

He was speaking to the Senate, but the message is appropriate for all Americans.

McCain added: “That responsibility is more important than any of our personal interests or political affiliations.”

This, too, is a message all America needs to hear.

America’s diversity provides strength, texture and complexity to this nation.

Yet it is our similarities – our shared commitment to a liberating and empowering set of ideals – that made us an example to the world of how self-governing can work.

Now this carefully woven tapestry is being ripped apart.

What it means to live in 'land of ideals'

Arizona Sen. John McCain.(Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)

“When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country, and instead of addressing it, goes to look for someone to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society,” Flake said in his address to the Senate.

Flake pointed out that future generations will someday ask on which side of this historic moment their grandparents stood.

“We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal,” Flake said. “Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.”

McCain dared us to remember the responsibility that comes from being the shining city on a hill.

In July, he told the Senate “America has made a greater contribution than any other nation to an international order that has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history.

In October, when he accepted the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal, McCain decried “half-baked, spurious nationalism” that would separate American foreign policy from America’s moral foundation.

“We live in a land of ideals, not blood and soil,” McCain said, reminding his listeners that “we will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.”

Their challenge: Make the world better

In May, after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told State Department employees that our national values can become an impediment to national security goals, McCain wrote an op-ed for The New York Times to protest this apparent decoupling of our ideals and our foreign policy.

Saying the Trump doctrine was “a message to oppressed people everywhere: Don’t look to the United States for hope,” McCain called this a dangerous betrayal of our history and our values.

Our claim to greatness, he wrote, is that “we saw the world as it was and we made it better.”

McCain and Flake see the current political realities, and they are trying to make things better.

Flake’s speech on the Senate floor ended with optimism that Americans “will return to ourselves once more.” Until then, he said, “we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does.”

Their solution: Speak out, come together

We live in a time when Americans increasingly see the nation in terms of us and them.

But one of “them” can be your neighbor, co-worker or even a relative who has a different view. Divisiveness is encouraged at the highest levels of our government.

The vitriol is not healthy or sustainable. It’s not American.

John McCain and Jeff Flake defined the problem and the solution. They told us to remember our national ideals, to speak out and to come together to make things better.